Sociology Revision; Family

and households
Functionalism Ideas
Murdock- 4 Functions of the family; Sexual, Reproductive, Education
and Economic.

Sexual: Healthy sex life, Controlled sex life.
Reproductive: Producing the next generation.
Economic: Man works, Women house keeps, taxes paid, food and shelter.
Educational: Primary socialisation and norms and values.

Parsons- 2 Functions of the family; Primary Socialisation and
Stabilisation of Adult Personalities.

Primary Socialisation: Primary socialisation typically occurs during
childhood and is when a child learns the attitudes, values and actions
appropriate to individuals as members of a particular culture.
Stabilising Adult Personalities: Warm bath theory; the idea that the family
provides a relaxing environment for the stresses of the day to be relieved.
Functionalism Keywords
Contigual roles
Reconstituted families
Consensus theory
Willmott and Young (Symmetrical families)
Murdock
Parsons
Traditional
Idealistic
Functions
Education
Economic
Sexual
Reproductive
Old Fashioned
Warm bath theory
Primary Socialisation
Nuclear/Cereal Packet families
Instrumental
Expressive


Breadwinner
Homemaker
Monogamy
Stabilising Adult Personalities
Positive

New Right
Policies: Government and Conservatives
The Media: Daily Mail, The Telegraph

Murray: Underclass

New Rabble: Long term unemployment, Welfare dependent and single
mothers on benefits. This is bad and dangerous for society.

New Victorians: Respective middle class, married, good socialisation, work
and pay taxes. Good for society.

Similar to Functionalist. They believe that the nuclear family is correct and
disagrees with reconstituted and single parent families.




New Right Keywords
Policies
Media
Conservatives
Daily Mail
New Rabble
New Victorian
Murray
Underclass
No Dark side
Social Policies
Laws
Traditional Roles
Ideal Family type
Multicultural Society
Immigration
Racist
Biased
Geographical Mobility
Extended Family
Consensus
Positive
Feminist Ideas
Liberal Feminist:

Not strict
Positive
New Man: A man who helps with childcare and with the jobs around the
house.
Can have partnerships in marriage.

Sue Sharpe: Womens Aspirations

Radical Feminists:

Strict
Men can benefit from family life more than women.
Marriage can be prison
Divorce allows escape
Negative

Ansley: Women are takers of shit

Marxist Feminist:

Benston: Slaves of wage slaves
Women produce the next generation of workers
Women used in capitalism to produce the next generation of workers

Black Feminists:

Ethnicity is just as important of gender
Ethnicity can add complication

e.g Asian- Arranged Marriages (Tradition)

Feminist Keywords
Liberal
Radical
Ansley
Benston
Ann Oakley
Sue Sharpe
Dual burden/Triple shift
Patriarchal
Androcentric
Unrealistic expectations
Warm bath theory
Inequality
Black Feminist
Conflict

Marxist Ideas
Marxist theorise the family from the capitalist perspective and can
therefore explain conflict in the family.

The Ruling class (Bourgoise) own the means of production and exploit
the working class (Proletariat).

Marxist adopt the critical view of the role of the family in society.

Marxist link the ideology to the role of the family.

Marxist see the nature and the role of the family as directly connect to
the needs of the economy- Economic determinism.

Marxist focus on the negative and exploitative aspects of the family.

Marxist do not acknowledge the positive benefits of the family life for
individuals and society.

Engels believed that the marriage should be monogamous so the
property can be passed on to the rightful heir.

Criticisms of Marxism
Marxists ignore positive aspects of family life
Marxists fail to consider the diversity of family life
Parents seem to have lost their ability to control children
The view that the family creates an obedient workforce ripe for exploitation is
too deterministic

Radical Psychiatry
Leach: Nuclear Family is too isolated and lacks support from extended family.
Also it puts pressure on the parents who lack emotional support from other
members of the family leading to adults taking anger out on children.
Laing: The family can cause mental illness, stress, depression and anxiety.
Children and parents can spend too much time together therefore the children
feel suffocated.
Cooper: Parents teach children to be obedient. Family is a microcosm of society
whereby:
Parents: Capitalist boss
Children: Worker






Marxist Keywords
Engels
Bourgoise
Proletariat
Capitalist
Negative
Ruling class
Abusive
Communism
Monogamous
Socialisation
Marx
Domestic Labour
Exploitative
Unit of consumption
Ideology
Family Overview
Like Family Dislikes Family
Functionalists; Murdock and
Parsons
Feminists; Oakley, Benston and
Ansley
New Right Marxists: Marx and Engels
LIKE: Nuclear and Cereal Packet
Families
Radical Psychiatrists; Laing, Cooper
and Leach
HATE: Reconstituted and
Single/Lone Parents
Social Policies
Partnerships:

Divorce Reform Act 1969: Easier for divorce. Radical Feminists believe that
divorce is an escape from marriage.

Civil Partnership Act 2004: It means that homosexual couples are allowed
to get married.

Domestic Violence:

1991: Rape within marriage became illegal.

Work:

Equal Pay Act 1975: It now means that women and men are paid the same.

Sex Discrimination Act 1975: The Sex Discrimination Act means that men
and women are seen as equal in jobs and in marriage.

Maternity leave and Paternity leave is now equal between men and
women.

It has now became illegal to fire a women who is pregnant.

Education:

Free up to the age of 18
Compulsory

Benefits:

Disabled:

Disability living allowance

Single Parent:

Family allowance
Child Tax Credit
CSA: Child Support Agency
Housing benefit


Secularisation
Secularisation: Is the declining influence of religion in society.

The Church seems to have little influence on society and wider
communities.

Secularisation has been noted in participant levels in the recent years.
There has been a decline in the amount of people who attend church on a
regular basis.

Nuclear Marriage rates are in decline. This could be caused by
secularisation because couples may choose not to marriage or get a
divorce even though their religion is against it because it is not promoted
as much in todays society.


Immigration
The cultural life of Britain has been greatly enlarged by the mass
immigrations of the 1950s and 60s.
Through immigration we are able to learn about different cultures
and religious beliefs.
e.g Arranged and forced marriages mainly occur in Eastern countries.
However due to immigration we have learnt about them in the past
50years.
Also, through immigration, we as a society are able to look at
generational changes. For example there would be a change of
behaviour if you are the 2
nd
or 3
rd
generation rather than if you were
1
st
generation. The customs and beliefs of the country of origin
become more diluted because of influences in the new country.
Immigration: Moving into a new country /society.
Emigration: Moving out of a new country/society into another.

Marriage and Cohabitation
While there has been a fall in marriage rate and growth within
cohabitation, marriage is still the most common form of
partnership.

In 2004/05 half of men and women were married while only one in
ten was cohabitating.

The term serial monogamy has been used to describe the pattern
of marriage in the UK.

Serial Monogamy: Is when a marriage occurs over and over again with
several different partners. Marriage-Divorce-Marriage-Divorce etc.

Separation and Divorce
Divorce is defined as the legal termination of a marriage.

About 40% of marriages will end in divorce.

Women are more likely than men to petition for divorce and have
a divorce granted to them: Dual/Triple burden?

Main reasons:

The legal changes which makes divorce easier, simple, quicker
and cheaper.
Changing attitudes towards divorce: less stigma for getting a
divorce.
Growing expectations of marriage; particularly for women.
Growing independence for women; women have higher
aspirations ( Sharpe, Feminist)



Changes in Family Structure
There has been a growth in reconstituted and reordered families.

Two common reasons for heading a lone-parent household :

1. Single lone motherhood (Women who have never married or
cohabited and who have children).
2. Divorce or separation where the children stay with their mother.

There was a rise in the numbers of singletons. Single-person
households include:

Young people who live alone.
Divorced or separated people who still live on their own.
Pensioners living alone (increasing life expectancy, especially for
women has added to the number of elderly widowed people living
alone)

There has been an increase in empty nest families as children grow up
and leave home. However there is evidence to suggest sons are
returning home or staying the family longer because of the cost of living.



Child Bearing
The fertility rate has fallen, leading to smaller families and there has been a
growth in child-less and child-free families. This means that fertility has fallen
below the rate to keep the population stable.

Childless: A couple who cannot conceive a child naturally.
Childfree: A couple that chooses not to have children but can.

The reasons for the decline in the fertility rate and increase in the average age of
motherhood include:

The fall in infant mortality rate
Greater availability of reliable and safe contraception
Later marriage
The higher cost of raising children
The increase in the number of women in higher education

Recent years there has been a increase in the number of women giving birth in
their 30s and 40s which has had an impact on the overall birth rate.

Higher rate of teenage single parenthood and a decline in the stigma if being lone
parent, particularly unmarried mother.


Social Construction of childhood
Childhood is socially constructed by adults. Children are defined as
such and there are expectations and attitudes attached to how
children should behave and treated.

Notions of childhood have changed over time. In the past, children
needed to be controlled by adults.

Childhood today is often viewed as time of innocence, vulnerability
and dependence when adults are responsible for care and protection.

Many sociologists see childhood as a social construction rather than a
natural state.

Social Construct: ideas about what childhood is according to time and
location.

Linked to Aries mini adult.
Sociologists
Postman: A sociologist who believed in the death of childhood was linked to:
Access to internet; porn, social networking sites etc.
Clothes
Knowledge and availability of drugs and alcohol
Child Abuse
Pilcher: Pilcher believed that childhood and adulthood should be keep separate and are
very separate stages of life. This is evident through the way laws are set out
demonstrating what children can and cant do. Other differences which show the divide
are the clothes and products which are created for the children (e.g books, toys and
food).
Aries: Aries called children mini adults. Aries said that the idea of childhood did not
exist.
Children worked from a very early age to help provide economic benefits. They were
an economic asset.
They were given the same rights, duties and skills as adults.
There was no distinction between children and adults with laws as children were
facing severe punishments as they were considered adults.

Differences between societies
In some societies, children work long working hours, often in appalling
conditions for low wages. Some aspects of the way children are treated at
work has been described as slavery.
Children have different responsibilities for caring for younger siblings or
even maintaining the family, which can be considered difficult for children
at such a young age.
In societies with a high rate of HIV/AIDS, many children are orphaned and
left to care for younger siblings and other members of the family.
Another aspects of childhood in war-torn countries is that some children
are forced to become soldiers and are brutalised into killing people.


Shortened Childhood
There are many boundaries between adulthood and childhood. Children,
particularly, girls sometimes dressed in a sexualised clothes from a young age.
It has been suggested that there have been a loss of innocence through
exposure to adult issues such as sex and death through the mass media and
increasingly the internet and web blogs expose young children to sensitive
topics.
Postman: A sociologist who believed in the death of childhood was linked to:
Access to internet; porn, social networking sites.
Clothes
Knowledge and availability of drugs and alcohol
Aries called children mini adults.




Child Abuse
Children suffer cruelty from adults and each week one child dies as a
result of injuries caused by parents or carers.
Children are most likely to be abused by someone in their family or
someone they know.
Every Children Matters; is a idea that the government put in place after
the death of Victoria Climbie and Baby P. Both of these cases highlighted
the failure between authorities and agencies not working together as they
should.
There is a child protection register which alerts social workers to children
who are vulnerable to abuse from their parents or carers.




Important definitions
General Fertility Rate: the number of births per 1,000 women of child-
bearing age (15yrs-44yrs).
Birth Rate: the number of live births per 1,000 of the population per year.
Death Rate: the number of deaths per 1,000 of the population.
Infant Mortality Rate: the number of deaths of infants under the age of 1
per 1,000 births per year.
Demography: The study of population statistics and trends or changes in
population size and structure.

The population of Britain is aging because life expectancy is increasing.
Life expectancy is higher in higher social classes. By 2020, over half the
population will be over 50.
Reasons for decline in fertility
and birth rate
Widespread availability of reliable contraception has enabled people
to plan their fertility more easily than in the past.
There is growing childlessness among particular groups of women-
such as highly qualified women.
More children are being born who survive into adulthood therefore
women tend to have fewer children.
The cost of having children is increasing. They are no longer a
economic asset to the family.
Women are going out to work. (Aspirations- Sue Sharpe)
Change in attitudes.
Women are delaying having children to focus on career.
Reasons for overall decline of the
death rate
Improvements in medical knowledge and health care.
Improvements in health and safety at work.
Better diet and environmental living conditions.
Improved maternity and antenatal care.
Better housing conditions and less overcrowding.





Reasons for decline in family size
Widespread use of reliable contraception.
Women working outside the home having careers- changing womens
role in the family.
Changing attitudes- smaller family is more desirable as cheaper.
Cost of having a large family.
No longer economic needs for the children to go out and have paid
work to help support the family. Economic burden rather than
economic asset.



Effects of an ageing population
Welfare benefit budget would need to increase to be able to
support old age pensions.
Pressure on the NHS; budget and the amount of bed and
available medical needs.
The older generation would be staying in jobs longer meaning
no jobs for the youth.
Housing and care homes would run out of space and not be
able to accommodate for everyone.




Ethnic Variations
South African Heritage: Men and Women are more likely to marry earlier,
have high rates of marriage and arranged marriages (especially among
Muslims and Sikhs), low separation and divorce rates.

Higher fertility rates have been found among Pakistani and Bangladesh
women. Their families are more likely to be larger with the women as full
time mothers and family arrangements are patriarchal. They are likely to
have grandparents or other members of the family living with them.

Families of black Caribbean heritage have low rates of marriage and high
levels of single parent households. Also high rates of separation and
divorce.

Class Variations
The traditional working class families are more likely to have segregated
conjugal roles, closer kinship networks and patriarchal family
arrangements.
The middle class family is more likely to have joint conjugal roles, with
women in full time paid employment. Willmott and Young suggest a
symmetrical family where men and women roles are seen as equal.
However Ann Oakley questions this view of the family.





Extended Family
There has been a shift to smaller and more isolated nuclear family with
having less and less face-to-face contact with relatives. Although many
keep in contact through phone, internet, and email.
Families linked to the Indian heritage keep close contacts with their
extended members of their family. They tend to have the extended
members live with them in the same household. Also it is common that
they marry young and remain living with relatives.






Key Ideas
Roles in the family have been linked to the move from extended to
nuclear with men and women developing more specialised roles after
industrialisation. Evidence suggests that women spend more time
than men doing and taking much more responsibility with domestic
arrangements such as cooking and cleaning.
Research conducted by Willmott and Young, suggested that men and
women were beginning to play more equal conjugal roles in the family
and that a symmetrical family was emerging. However, Ann Oakley
questioned their validity of the research and found evidence that
contradicted their views.
Evidence from the British Attitudes survey suggests that housework
and childcare still emerged as gendered activities. Women still carry
out tasks such as cooking, cleaning and shopping. Whereas men would
carry out more creative tasks such as repairing.
Power relationships within a family have still been characterised by
feminists as patriarchal, with men having decision making power over
the women and children.
There has been a change in the way that research into conjugal roles
and the domestic division of labour has been carried out. Older
research tended to be qualitative and relied on statistical results of
interviews and observations. However it has emerged that domestic
tasks are not simply carried out as jobs but relate to conceptions of
masculinity and femininity and how identities are formed.